


atoning for some vast and secret sin

by pigeonanarchy



Series: when the battle has done [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (In Space) - The Mechanisms (Album), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Gen, Rose is mentioned, So is King Cole, and a bunch of unnamed people - Freeform, no beta we die like snow and rose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23223805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonanarchy/pseuds/pigeonanarchy
Summary: snow white sad timesinspired by a tumbr post by atiredbrainsranting
Series: when the battle has done [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669801
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	atoning for some vast and secret sin

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first thing I've written that a) wasn't for school and b) lasted more than five words before I forgot about it so I guess the quarantine is good for something at least

Snow sat and listened as the court argued. She had spent a few weeks making a game out of predicting people’s arguments, but that game had long passed from almost funny to utterly depressing. The only reasons she could do that were because no one ever said anything new, and because no one expected her to say anything so no one noticed if she just sat there silently, like she did every day. Why bother talking when no one would listen?

She had thought, for a time, that her invitation to the war chambers had meant something. Her first day there had been filled with naive hope that maybe, just maybe, when she got there she’d be able to bring up her points and people would begin to see a chance for peace. Surely, the fact that she’d been invited had meant they would listen to her. As the conversation had started on her first day, she knew not to bother.

She had thought she could save her sister. Save all the families the war had yet to tear apart. She had realized fairly quickly that she never would. King Cole would never stop. No argument, no combination of words, no carefully thought out phrasing, no tragedy would ever change him into the better man he might have once been, and he would never have enough. Peace had not been considered since the start of the war, and it would never be considered again except as a joke. The war would never end, no matter what she tried. If saving everyone was impossible, she decided, then she should give up on that. There was no point trying to figure out how to achieve an impossible goal, and her time would be better spent finding a way to manage what little she could.

The people of the worlds yet to be conquered - Snow gave them up as lost.

They would die no matter how she argued, no matter what she did. So she didn’t. The soldiers fighting for King Cole (her sister) might not have to die. Their families might not have to live through their loss. No part of King Cole’s plans required that his people die for him, as long as his conquest continued. If she could find another way for the war to be fought - something that removed the need for so many soldiers to fight and die in the army, perhaps she could make things better. Perhaps she could still help some people.

\- 

_ “Doctor Hansel? Doctor Gretel? I have a question for you two. There’s something I’ve been thinking about, and I’d like to know if it might be possible.” _

-

When she spoke up in the war chambers for the first time, she almost stopped immediately. Knowing no one values your opinion can’t prepare you for the moment everyone looks at you and you can just  _ tell _ that all they care about is the way your hair falls over your shoulder, the way your lips move as you speak. She continued speaking anyways, because she was speaking for so many more people than just herself and she could not do anything but speak.

As she spoke, however, the gazes shifted. First to befuddled and amused, but as they noticed King Cole taking an interest in Snow’s suggestion, everyone else sat up and took notice.

Her proposal was simple. In order to make the expansion more efficient, she suggested a shift from the army presently fighting to one formed of clones. This would allow more control over the quality of the soldiers, and would enable the army to be significantly larger, as they would no longer be dependent on either willing volunteers or the unmotivated and dissatisfied soldiers from drafts.

This would spare your people, she didn’t say. This would save their lives.

Even as she saw the greed in the king’s eyes, and knew she was proposing a faster way to kill, she still felt something that could once have been mistaken for hope - had she still remembered what hope felt like.

-

Initially, as the fires died and the rubble settled and she hid from the king’s men, that her sister had been an example. She had never stopped calling for peace, even after she knew it was impossible. What else could she have done, support the horrible war? Cheer as the corpses piled up on worlds increasingly distant? It was as unimaginable to her as staying quiet in the war chambers would have been. She assumed that the attack on Rose’s wedding had been a response to her increasing activity in what politics she could influence, and a warning to anyone else considering her path. People who are willing to risk themselves might not be willing to risk their families and friends, after all.

Then she saw the king’s new soldiers, and everything made a new, terrible sense.

She had succeeded at one thing. This new army did spare King Cole’s subjects the pain of dying far from everything they knew, the pain of never seeing their loved ones again, the pain of not being able to find their grave even if they ever managed to even find the right planet. Of course, Snow was no longer one of King Cole’s subjects.

With each sister she shot dead, with each sister’s corpse she walked past, with each battlefield covered in dead rebels and her sisters, she thought. In the end, she spared the people she had been trying to save. If it brought her more pain, well, it was her suggestion. Her suggestion that stole decades of Rose’s life, her suggestion that led her here. The few people who knew her well enough to see past her calm facade tried to tell her not to blame herself, but she didn’t feel like she could spend time on herself and her grief. Not when she could be helping others, not when there were things she could change.

General White steeled herself, and advanced.

-

It was, perhaps, a mercy that she died before Rose. She never knew that Rose didn’t live long after her.


End file.
